


Baldr's Dreams

by Persephone_Kore



Category: Eddas - Fandom, Gesta Danorum, Norse Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 17:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2159151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone_Kore/pseuds/Persephone_Kore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "Baldr finds himself flipping between two realities; one in which he is the god of light beloved by all and one in which he is a demigod warlord. In one Hod is his blind brother, in the other his mortal enemy (in both senses). In one Nanna is his devoted wife, in the other he's obsessively in love with her but she chooses Hod.</p><p>In other words he's flipping between the Eddic version of his story and the Gesta Danorum.</p><p>But which is real, and can he sort out what's going on before he winds up dead in both?</p><p>Bonus: Baldr's two personalities start to bleed together and do solve some of the problems in both realities. For instance his calmness as god of light helps his warlord self not make himself sick obsessing over Nanna; his warlord self overcomes his god of light passivity and isn't willing to stand around having things thrown at him just because he's invulnerable."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baldr's Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [khilari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/gifts).



Baldr woke with a start and bit back a groan. He'd thought he was finally going to get some sleep, weary after long days of battle and nights with visions of Nanna before his eyes, and now he'd jolted awake again from what must have been a dream of her, so vivid he could still feel the impression of her in his arms. 

His eyelids were red with surprisingly bright light. Dawn? Maybe he'd slept the night through after all. He did feel vastly better, although usually he had to be truly exhausted for a bed in the field to seem this soft. He raised the arm Nanna wasn't lying on and rubbed his eyes, then opened them. 

The window was dark. The light shone from his own skin. Nanna really _was_ lying on his right arm, against his side, and they were naked under the blankets. What in--

Right. Baldr shook his head. He was awake now; he'd just been having a very vivid and peculiar dream. Apparently about not being able to sleep. 

Nanna patted his chest with a slender hand and raised her head. "Something wrong?" 

"Not really. Strange dreams, that's all." Baldr yawned. 

"Startling, apparently." 

Baldr smiled and ran his fingers over her shoulder. "I dreamed I was a mortal warrior. A very tired one. You were in the dream, though. We weren't married yet, but I had glimpsed you bathing and could barely sleep for thinking of you." 

Nanna laughed. "That was the other way around. Perhaps now you know how I felt." 

"I didn't keep you waiting too long, did I?" 

"Oh." She blinked slowly at him, a long sweep of eyelashes. "Far too long." 

Baldr propped up on one elbow. "Shall I make it up to you before we go back to sleep?" 

"You can try...."

* * *

Baldr woke to a cold dawn and a hard bed and spent a disoriented moment trying to recall how he'd gotten there. He wasn't exactly a stranger to waking up in unexpected places; no one and nothing actually _harmed_ him if he slept in the open, but he did occasionally discover he'd been carried off in an excess of affection. Or possibly just attraction to shiny things. Twice it had been a flock of birds. Once, after a long stretch of dim and rainy weather, it had been plants.

When he woke in a new location in _Jotunheim_ , the next question was whether he would get home without having to fight his way out. This was essentially independent of whether he was asked to bed a giantess first, and often of whether he did it. He did sometimes point out that he would rather _not_ if he would afterward have to injure or kill her (or her kin) to get home, but one couldn't reasonably expect a truthful answer under such circumstances. 

At least it was less trouble than Loki habitually got into, even if telling the actual stories would sound ridiculous to anyone but Freya. 

Odd, though, he was fairly sure he'd been at home in Breidablik this time. Giving up on an explanation for the moment, Baldr opened his eyes and looked around. He was not only camping, but he was surrounded by other men, each and all with weapons near at hand, a veritable army. 

He shook his head hard to clear it. Yes, naturally he was surrounded by an army. His own army. Today was the day he'd speak face to face with King Gewar and reiterate his desire to marry the lovely Nanna. He'd dreamed of her more and more often of late, their embraces suffused with a divine glow. Baldr wasn't sure why his dreams had now added the idea of being carried off by lovestruck Jotun women -- he was sure even the most legendary couldn't compare with Nanna -- and in the dream he'd been alarmingly accepting of the whole situation. Still, strange things often seemed normal in dreams. Perhaps the enthusiasm was a sign he should be confident in his suit. 

As omens went, it was not helpful. He reached Gewar's home by late morning. Gewar sent him to speak to Nanna; Baldr poured his heart out, praised her beauty to the skies, and described his own talents and triumphs.

Nanna said, "No." 

His wit and planned persuasions deserted him, and Baldr blurted, "What? Why _not_?" 

It was not, perhaps, his proudest moment. 

Nanna shook her head and turned away. Baldr asked again. 

Nanna said, "Are you not a son of the highest of the gods? A god can't wed a mortal, any more than wealth can wed poverty. And then, too, the gods have been known to break their promises, perhaps because such an unequal bond cannot hold." 

She went on in this vein until Baldr could no longer contain his disbelief. "Have you set out to insult both my parents in the guise of praising my father, and call me an oathbreaker?" He rose and paced the room. "I have desired you since I saw you. I have adored you in my dreams. I would not break my troth with you, I--" He paused, then came back to kneel at her feet. She drew back a little, but he studied her face earnestly. "I think I see. You've pledged yourself to Hod, haven't you?" 

Nanna didn't answer immediately, but her lips tightened, and after a few moments she nodded. 

Baldr sprang to his feet. "I understand." He'd known Hod was his rival, but not that he'd been so far in advance. 

"I'm not sure you--"

"I'll free you of him, fair one." He would kill Hod, as he'd planned. He would show who was the better man. He would call on all his kin and allies. Hod would die. And Baldr would have Nanna's hand. 

He turned and walked out of the room, before she could feel obliged to respond. Perhaps he'd had the dream wrong. Perhaps the Jotun women represented obstacles to reaching his love. 

The world tilted oddly, growing dim and red with anger. Baldr rubbed his eyes and tried to open them so he could see better. 

The dream dissolved around him, and Baldr propped himself on his elbows in bed and checked himself just short of rising, suddenly unsure what he'd just been planning to do. 

He lay back and stared at the ceiling, waiting for his heart to slow and the unfamiliar fury -- at Hod, _Hod_ of all people! -- to subside.

* * *

Baldr plunged between two of Hod's men, clubbing one aside and hacking into the other with his sword. He planted his foot on an unbloodied patch of the swaying deck and caught the blade of a third man's spear on his arm. It sliced through his shirt and slid harmlessly off his skin, and he laughed aloud at his enemy's expression before running him through. It looked as if not everyone in Hod's army knew why he carried no shield. 

The battle was as glorious as any he could imagine in his father's Valhalla, not that he would be injudicious enough to say so in Odin's hearing. His father and brothers had answered his call, and Hod's men could not stand against the ranks of the Aesir. 

"To me, to me!" Thor was shouting, to friend and foe alike. Baldr bared his teeth in glee to see that his foes, after a few too many shattered shields and broken bones, grew slower to answer. 

A horn somewhere sounded retreat. Hod's men who had pressed the battle into Baldr's fleet began to draw back onto their own ships, cutting free the ones Baldr's army had reached and abandoning them to capture. The line still roped together began to back in the water to gain room to separate. Baldr made the leap to his own fleet and ran along the decks, trying to find Hod himself. He didn't want him to get away. Humiliation wasn't _sufficient_. Even if it lowered him in Nanna's eyes, there was still the matter of promises. 

Baldr turned at a shout from a voice he knew well and felt sudden white-hot pride as Hod leaped from the prow of one of his own ships onto Hringhorni itself. He charged through Baldr's men, and there was blood on his limbs, but his armor turned all their blades as he bore down on Thor. 

Baldr raced back toward his half-brother. This was good; that was the reason for the jolt of pride in his enemy. This was _better_ , especially if he could reach Hod before Thor struck him down. Better to have a worthy rival, for the valor that had earned Nanna's early promise to be extraordinary. Best of all for Hod to die nobly in that excess of courage, however foolhardy--

He was too far off. Hod reached Thor. Baldr's steps slowed in disappointment and a sudden pang of dread that he didn't understand, waiting for Thor's club to crush Hod's skull and ribs.

\--And Hod's sword flashed like the sun and cleaved through the club as if it were soft flesh, cutting the haft too short for even one hand to grasp, and Thor fell back in shock from the next stroke. The tip of the blade skimmed across skin that should be harder than Baldr's, and a thin streak of red seeped from Thor's shoulder.

Hod's men surged toward Baldr's fleet with a great shout. Baldr rushed forward again and forced Hod back from Thor, but however he called on them to rally, the heart had gone out of his Aesir kin. His mother's kinsmen were not much less stunned. 

Hod's example inspired the rest of his army. They fought without fear and they fought as if they meant to destroy Baldr's ships instead of capturing them. Before long, a second retreat was sounded, this time for Baldr's side; they cut the ties and rode the falling tide out to sea. Hod's ships pursued, with howls of rage and laughter from their sailors, until Hod made himself heard and called them back. 

Baldr gave orders to draw what remained of his ships together and bring all the survivors onto the most seaworthy of the wrecks. The Aesir took one of their own and went straight out to sea -- he supposed they were headed for home -- and Baldr's fleet limped toward the nearest friendly harbor. 

Baldr sat alone that night and wakeful, gnashing his teeth.

* * *

Baldr woke in an eyrie occupied by two curious new-hatched eaglets, an egg (near to hatching, and tucked against his side), and the mother eagle. There was a storm giant watching from the adjacent crag. He startled the eagle by getting abruptly to his feet and clambered out of the nest. The giant jumped up and tried to catch his arm, scowling; Baldr shoved him away and drew his sword. The giant fell back, and Baldr stalked off. 

It was difficult to stalk down a mountain, especially while being followed by a petulant raincloud. Baldr lost his grip on wet stone and slid down a sheer drop. The sting where the rocks scraped his hands and arms made him stop and look at them in surprise. Skin pale and glowing, droplets of bright blood welling up and staining the rain red. 

He leaned back against the cliff, then, and pressed his hands to his eyes. He'd known enough of himself to be unalarmed at waking in an eagle's nest, but he had been reacting otherwise like the self in his dreams. He'd even been thinking he had to get back to what was left of his army, though he'd been convinced that it lay to the west, which was the right direction for Asgard but had no particular reason to be the right direction for his dream-self. He'd been halfway down the mountain before remembering clearly who and where he was.

Baldr felt a sudden impulse to climb back up and apologize to the eagle, but that would probably just lead to further quarreling with the storm giant. 

He returned to Asgard still dripping -- the cloud had followed him until it was all rained out -- but with the scrapes closed to pink skin. When he was dry again, he went to speak to Frigg.

"Mother," he said, choosing to sit on the floor before her as if he were a child again.

She looked down at him. "What troubles you?"

"I have been having strange, dark dreams," he said slowly. "Where I am a mortal warrior, racked by mad passions and often embattled. Where Hod is not my brother, and not blind, but whole and skilled in all things and... my enemy, in both love and war. Where he's my rival for Nanna, and though I never seem to understand this in the dreams, he has won her love." 

Frigg raised her eyebrows and said neutrally, "Hod loves you, and Nanna is a loving and faithful wife." 

"I know!" Baldr rubbed a hand over his face and moderated his tone. "I do know. And yet in my dreams, I don't. And I -- I have been uncertain for moments at a time of which is real. I've awakened and thought I was dreaming, or awakened and thought I was _him_. And in the dreams, I remember this life -- my _real_ life, as if it were the dream. It's been growing more confusing." He hesitated. "And -- Mother, this last time, I dreamed that the Aesir came to do battle, and were defeated and driven off." He forced himself to the questions he was most reluctant to ask. "So I have begun to worry -- is this anything like a seer's dreams? Or is it more like going mad?"

Frigg was silent for a long moment. "You will die," she said finally, "soon or late. As will the mortal in your dreams. As will we all. Let us see what we can do to make it later." 

It was not exactly an answer, but pressing Frigg for specifics never worked. 

For once, whether it was the influence of his impatient dream persona or only the urgency of his questions, Baldr really wanted to try it anyway.

* * *

Baldr heard the news of Nanna's wedding to Hod and stood raging in silence for a long moment, until the messenger quailed back and he remembered himself enough to dismiss the man. 

What he would do, he decided, was start again. He would rebuild his army. And this time, it would not rely on anyone whose individual defeat would panic the rest of the men.

* * *

The gods and goddesses were called to council, where they discussed Baldr's dreams at far greater length than he would have wished. 

"All this fuss over a few nightmares?" Loki muttered, just within Baldr's hearing. It was probably deliberate. "This is pointless." 

Baldr partly agreed with him -- he supposed Frigg and Odin ought to know, but his dreams seemed odd for prophecy (or perhaps not odd _enough_ ) and presumably couldn't be averted if they were, and the whole thing was becoming more than slightly embarrassing -- but he wasn't willing to say that about his parents' decisions. "If you feel that way, Loki," he said, "I'm sure no one would miss you if you didn't attend." Loki, at least, could wander off without either being ungrateful or especially surprising anyone. 

Loki shot him an unexpectedly poisonous look and stalked to the other side of the crowd. 

Baldr closed his eyes and found himself immersed in preparations for battle. This seemed much more productive than the distant sense of helpless fretting he remembered from his dreams, so he plunged into it. He had gathered his generals and was in the midst of laying out strategies to lure Hod onto his preferred ground when a sharp pain in his palm made him start, and he found that Nanna had taken his hand and dug her nails into it. 

Baldr's apparent dazedness did not exactly reassure anyone. Odin, not content with his own wisdom or Frigg's taciturnity or whatever he could wring from the Norns, at last rode to Hel. 

Baldr rubbed Sleipnir down afterward -- it seemed only fair, as the journey had been on his behalf, and Sleipnir had been blessedly absent from his dreams. (On reflection, this was nearly as odd as his dream-self's adversarial relationship with Hod. Baldr would confidently expect Sleipnir to turn up for any naval battle Odin happened to be a part of. Odin could probably have flown out to the ships as an eagle and still have his horse show up. Sleipnir did not like to be left out.) 

He fed him apples afterward, until Loki happened by and said he was going to give Sleipnir colic. Baldr had his doubts about this, as all evidence so far tended to suggest Sleipnir had inherited Loki's digestion. He took his leave anyway, giving Sleipnir a resigned pat on the nose and submitting to having his hair slobbered. 

Odin had returned with prophecies of Ragnarok. When the council reconvened, Frigg declared that to preserve Baldr, beloved light of the Aesir, and to stave off the ruin of the gods, she would ask all things to swear not to harm him.

* * *

And so all things gave their oaths to Frigg, with Baldr standing by her. Fire would not burn him, nor water drown -- or batter him, or steal more warmth from his skin than he could spare. Wind would not tear at him nor lightning strike. No stone and no metal would pierce or bruise him, and the trees vowed the same in turn, root and trunk, branch and leaf and fruit. Food wouldn't choke him. Rope would not strangle or burn. Bird and beast and serpent swore not to attack him, that their teeth or claws, hooves or horns or weight alone, would not injure him; no insect would bite or sting; no disease would take hold of him nor venom do him harm. 

Baldr thanked them all graciously. Many of them begged to demonstrate that they would not and could not harm him, and he agreed, to show he trusted in their oaths. He swallowed poison and felt nothing. He pushed up his sleeve and let a wolf gnaw on his arm, teeth denting his skin but not breaking it. One of Skadi's pet serpents ruined his clothes by drooling lovingly on him until he began to wonder if he should find an excuse to have Eir look at it. 

With wood and stone and metal, the Aesir helped. They were tentative at first; Thor, for instance, frowned and tapped him on the left hand with Mjolnir so lightly that Baldr was fairly sure it wouldn't have hurt regardless. Baldr encouraged him to try harder, and the next blow left a small crater in the ground and Baldr's hand unscathed. They both grinned. 

Thrown weapons slid aside in the air, which rapidly taught people not to stand opposite each other, or they struck him and fell to the ground or bounced. Swords, maces, and stones held in the hand slipped aside or stopped with a wrenching jolt. 

The Aesir rejoiced and held a great feast for him; they sent word to the other worlds, and they celebrated too, so that Baldr felt the echoes of it. 

The demonstrations continued and swiftly became a favorite sport. One night, they didn't stop until Loki stepped up and threw what Baldr at first thought was a rock. It shattered against him, which was new, and turned out to be an egg. 

There was a general indignant outcry at this, and Baldr brushed at the goop. "I should count myself lucky it was fresh," he said, which guaranteed that several people would at least try to keep an eye out in case Loki turned up with eggs again. "If you're all done for now, I'm going to get something to eat."

He rejoined Nanna, who had saved a plate for him, which was just as well since if Loki had stopped eating there normally wasn't much left. "I'm not sure I like this," she said quietly. "It's disquieting to see everyone look as if they're trying to hurt you." 

"They're enjoying it," he said. "As are the weapons." 

"Are you?" 

Baldr shrugged a little. "They want to demonstrate that everything in the nine worlds loves me too much to harm me," he said. "How can I decline the honor? Although," he added, "after the dreams I've been having, I am just as glad Hod hasn't asked anyone to help him aim."

* * *

Baldr planned, this time, as ferociously as he ever fought. He sent scouts; he took their reports and then slipped into Sweden alone to inspect the area for himself. This was greatly facilitated by the fact that he _did not glow_ , which was not something he'd ever contemplated as a potential problem before these strange dreams started. 

He had finally concluded, with some disappointment, that the glow had nothing in particular to do with Nanna, although she still featured, vividly and gloriously, in most of his nights. Less pleasantly, his dream-self had finally caught up to his real-life invulnerability and now seemed eerily relaxed about standing around having things thrown at him. Baldr had heard better ideas from men whose recent past involved both copious drink and a head injury. 

(And one woman whose recent past had involved both drink and a head injury. Baldr had been responsible for the alcohol, though not for the puddle she'd slipped in. Sitting up with her to make sure she didn't choke on vomit or hit her head _again_ had not been quite what he'd had in mind for their encounter; to be fair, it could hardly have been her plan either. For lack of better options, he'd proceeded to get somewhat drunker himself and spent the night telling her all about his bizarre dreams, even including the disturbing suspicion that they were actually a window into some other person's life. If she thought he sounded like a madman, she would probably also think she didn't remember the conversation clearly enough to start rumors.) 

He planned, he spied, and he slept little and warily. He had much to do, surrounded by enemies, and when he did sleep the figure of Nanna haunted him -- in his bed, or by his side, or just out of reach as he watched her with a man whose face slipped between Hod's and his own. 

This time, he chose his ground. This time, his army was all mortal, less powerful but more familiar. This time, there was no one whose fall would terrify (except perhaps Baldr himself, but that couldn't be helped). 

This time, he sought out Hod first of all in the battle. They were drawn apart, though not before wounding each other. Baldr didn't feel the cut until later, when it began to weaken his left arm, but it must have been Hod's famous sword. One more glory, then, that he should defeat the only man who could hurt him.

This time, Hod's men fled to the jeers of Baldr's army. This time, the victors let them flee, that they might arrive home with the taste of it sour in their mouths. 

This time, he won. 

Baldr staggered from the battle among exhausted men (there had been more than one reason he ordered them to halt pursuit) and heard them calling for water and swearing in dismay when there was none left, and no spring or river in sight, everyone's skin slicked and gritty under the sun. A late summer day. His choice of timing. His choice of battleground.... He shut his eyes and stood still for a long moment, a knot of confusion gathering around him, and then opened them and drew his sword. 

He walked to where he knew there was water running under the earth and plunged his blade full-length into the hillside, calling on his father's blood in him. The spring spouted up from the gap as he pulled his sword free, and he and his men stood in the glittering spray and laughed. 

The fame of it was heard throughout every kingdom.

And after celebrating his victory, Baldr, who had not slept properly in something over a month, fell senseless in his bed and did not walk again for twice that time.

* * *

Baldr stood before the assembled Aesir and was pelted with everything that came to hand, and lauded; at night he dreamed of battle and fountains and, again, of exhaustion. And at night he bedded Nanna with a ferocity that was not like him, and she surged up under him and fastened her mouth on his neck, and afterward he was surprised to realize the place was faintly sore and then remembered he shouldn't be. 

Nanna had sworn nothing to him except to be his wife, and never needed to do more. Of course her nails and her mouth could still mark him. But in his dreams, no woman had ever done so. In his dreams, nothing had broken his skin.

He rolled away from her and went to stare out the open window until she came up and poked him in the side. 

"You're brooding. That's strange for you. And with the shutters open, everyone can tell."

"With the shutters open, anyone looking out their own windows at this hour will only think I wanted to gaze at the stars. It's not _that_ unusual." 

Nanna conceded the point with a shrug and insinuated herself under his arm. "What's the matter?" 

He hugged her against him reflexively, but the pit of his stomach was knotted. "You enjoyed that, didn't you?" 

Nanna raised her eyebrows and let her hand rove across his back. "As I always do, light of my eyes. I know you've been troubled lately by many things, but surely _that_ is not a problem?" 

"It wasn't _me_. That's what troubles me." 

"I beg your pardon. I'm positive you were there." 

"I meant," Baldr said, uncomfortably aware that there was no way for this to sound reasonable, "I was... at least, I felt like, the man whose life I keep dreaming about. _I_ should not be surprised if you bite me. _He_ has been invulnerable to such things all his life." 

Nanna was silent for a moment. "Is he not simply a part of you? Or a figure of fate?" 

Baldr let out a long sigh. "I am no longer sure. I thought so at first, but sometimes it hardly feels that way." He smiled wryly. "Perhaps that's only wishful thinking. He's mortal. He hates Hod -- as an honorable foe, but he hates him -- and I hate to wake feeling his fury and distrust. He cannot seem to grasp that the Nanna he knows is in love with someone else and has made himself ill with work and dreams. I'm not sure whether I can't stand him, or want to save him from his own folly." 

Nanna turned her back to the window and leaned against the wall below it, still between his arm and his body. "He acts, while you stand and wait." 

"Ouch," Baldr said mildly. 

"I think you should go traveling again." 

"Tired of my company, my love?" 

Nanna jabbed him in the ribs, a little harder this time, and Baldr laughed and thought his counterpart didn't know what he was missing. (Or perhaps he did. Baldr supposed that if they were separate people, his own time in Nanna's company might not be helping the other Baldr's state of mind, but he was not giving _that_ up for his counterpart's convenience.) "You could take me with you," she suggested. "But I think you're growing restless."

"I'd worry about you." 

"You would defend me." 

"Yes. And I know you have walked alone before. And yet still...." He trailed off. It seemed unkind, now, to go where he knew there was a chance he'd have to fight to return home. If he explained that to Nanna, she would probably laugh and tell him that anyone who stood in his way knew what they were getting into. Which he understood, but it didn't help. 

When he had been silent for some time, Nanna shifted away from the wall and took his hand. "Shall I tell you what you should do tonight?" 

Baldr raised his eyebrows. "By all means." 

"You should come back to bed," said Nanna, reaching up with her free hand to close the shutters and block the moon from his sight, "and this time, you should pay more attention."

* * *

Hod had gone to Denmark to claim his legacy as king there, and the brother who was supposed to be ruling Sweden had died. Baldr, seeing an opportunity, gathered his strength again to rise from his sickbed. He disciplined his mind to calm and refused to worry about the suspicion that this was not entirely his own idea; he ate and drank diligently even when dreams of Nanna banished all other appetites; he consulted wise-women from his father's kin, and they prepared him special meals with venoms in them. He stared at the eldest when she told him this, and thought of his dreams of consuming poison without harm, and he ate the strange food and felt invigorated.

He built himself up, and waited until Hod left his new kingdom for the next one over. Then Baldr went to Zealand in Denmark with his own fleet of ships. He was careful to behave peaceably there, even with this show of strength, and threw off a minor incursion or two from men who had heard of Hod's departure but not of Baldr's arrival. He exerted himself to charm the Danes, much as he had Nanna -- with his person and his armies and his accomplishments and victory -- but had better success, and was crowned. 

Hod came back in a fury, of course. It was only having established his position and being the one nearest at hand and heart to the Danes that gave Baldr the advantage. Still, it was just advantage enough, and as the air turned crisp, Hod at last retreated with the last vestiges of warm weather to spend the winter on friendly land. 

Baldr celebrated with the men he'd brought and with his newly won people, knowing the victory would bind them to him more firmly, and for a little while he could forget his dreams on waking. 

They returned with the late winter, as he grew restless; for weeks and months, he spent too many dreams standing while everyone flung honor at him. There was pride, there was gratitude, but he grew steadily wearier of the whole thing and restless there too. 

Baldr stood among the assembly with stones and arrows flying at him, with the conviction growing in the back of his mind that this was _foolish_ , that it was mocking fate, that all the gods were stricken with madness. He raised his eyes and looked away, beyond the half-circle of armed Aesir and beyond most of the watchers, and he saw Loki approach holding a flimsy dart and speak to his blind brother. 

He watched Hod, and saw his enemy take a weapon in hand, and for a moment saw the sword Mistletoe that could cut him, while he stood here doing _nothing_. 

He took a sudden step forward, with a feeling of breaking fetters, with the curious feeling that he was not the one acting, and said, "This is idiotic." 

Understandably, a stunned silence fell. Those with raised weapons lowered them, looking confused and faintly offended. 

Baldr, feeling entirely wrong-footed himself, shook his head and raised his hands. "I'm sorry, that wasn't quite what I meant to say." _That_ was certainly the truth. Still, telling them he hadn't meant it at all and they should start up again would be not only foolish but even more awkward. Even if he suspected his dream-self of being the source of the impulse, he did have something of a point. Not that he was helping _now_. On further thought, that was probably just as well. "My friends," he began, "I think that... that perhaps it is time we find a new amusement. I am honored by the love you bear me, and I think trying the effect of the oaths may have been wise -- but if we mean to heed the warning of dreams and keep our fate waiting, perhaps we should make less of a game of it." 

They agreed, some more hesitantly than others. And as they had turned to this sort of play after the Thing had finished addressing other urgent matters, they turned away toward their homes. Baldr drew a long breath and went to speak with Hod.

Baldr woke with a sense of triumph, and heard that Hod had landed an army in Denmark.

* * *

Baldr thought the end of his days as target might improve his peace of mind, but it did not. Perhaps it was because of the strange way he'd stopped it. Perhaps it was because with the spring thaw, his dream-self was at war again, and his nights filled suddenly with the clash of weapons and with strategy and grim enmity. 

On the same day, he exasperated Nanna and picked a fight with Hod for no reason at all, except that he'd examined Loki's dart and discovered it was made of mistletoe. Which was no reason to reproach Hod and an absurd thing to complain about to Loki. Baldr decided he was not fit company for anyone at the moment, took the dart with him, and went for a walk. He had found a sunny spot by a brook and was reaching out to pet the fox snoozing there when it opened its eyes and Baldr realized his mistake. 

"Loki," he said, withdrawing his hand hastily. "I beg your pardon. I thought you were someone else." 

Loki snorted and sat up. "And as I'm not, you realized I might still be able to bite you?" 

"I thought you might not care to have your ears ruffled. Are you going back to sleep?" 

Loki eyed him oddly. "Not now." Then, as Baldr sat down in the damp grass, "What _are_ you doing?" 

"If you're not trying to sleep, I thought I might stay and talk." He had been looking for solitude, but walking away now felt rude.

"We hardly talk." 

Baldr nodded. "An excellent point." Odin shared much of Loki's sense of humor. Baldr shared less, and put up with the rest of it because his father and his siblings loved Loki. Still, it was likely that they should talk more than they did. 

"I haven't seen you outside a crowd in months," Loki said. "Don't tell me they've all taken offence at the end of their game?" 

"That, no," Baldr said, "although I've been in a foul enough mood today myself to quarrel with both Nanna and Hod."

Loki snorted, and when Baldr glanced over, he had changed to the shape of a man and was crouched instead of lounging. "So you decided if you were going to be rude to people, you might as well come and find me?" 

"Aren't you the expert? But no, I wasn't looking for you at all."

Loki rolled his eyes. "Of course not." 

"Still," Baldr added, "likely either talking to you will cheer me up, or at least I'll be irritated over things that have actually _happened_." 

Loki eyed him. "Baldr the Gentle has been fighting over imaginary things?" 

"Dreams." He wouldn't ordinarily confide in Loki, but everyone had heard about the early ones. "Where Hod is my enemy. Which I do not believe."

"Ah. Not the first fuss your dreams have occasioned. Of course, the prophecies do have him killing you, too."

Baldr turned to stare at Loki. "If that's so, I'm not sure I appreciate your handing him a weapon."

Loki blinked innocently, which Baldr also did not believe. "Odin didn't tell you that part? I knew he hadn't mentioned it to the council. Though it should hardly have been a surprise." 

"I am not so sure my dreams are prophecy." Baldr leaned back on his hands. "They seem more like another life. I'm hardly myself in them." 

"Who are you, then?" Of course Loki would be flippant. 

"Some mortal warrior," said Baldr. "Invulnerable all his life, courageous, ambitious... impatient and spiteful. He gnashed his teeth for months over my letting people throw things at me, and has recently taken up drinking snake venom. I'm losing patience with him." 

"I don't blame you," Loki said, although he did look as if he had suddenly developed doubts about Baldr's sanity. Baldr had a few of them himself, although at the moment they were focused on having tried to explain this to Loki. "You did quit swallowing poisons once you'd tried them all. Perhaps you could influence him to turn to wine instead." 

"Supposedly it strengthens him. Perhaps he needs it; he did manage to make himself ill with his obsessions last autumn." Baldr gazed at the brook. "His rival is well equipped, even if he's taken up sulking lately too. He wears a tunic of excellent armor, and he has a ring much like Draupnir and a fine sword -- I would say it might be Laeveteinn." He watched Loki out of the corner of his eye, thinking of seeing him with his... with the real Hod. "But _he_ calls it Mistletoe." 

"What an odd coincidence," said Loki. "That was the dart I offered Hod right before you decided to announce to the entire Thing that we were all idiots. So where am I, in your dreams? Hod's blacksmith? Armorer?" 

"Nowhere. I haven't dreamed of you at all," said Baldr. Because he was watching Loki intently if indirectly, he saw the flare in his eyes, though he wasn't sure why. "As you may imagine," he went on, "it makes your company unusually refreshing." 

Loki blinked at that. "So I did not imagine," he said. "Why?" 

Baldr snorted. "Because even if you are false, at least I know you're real. Or rather, that I haven't been talking to some unreal version of you." That he wasn't reacting to someone else... though, possibly, to an enemy after all. It was a strange thought. 

"I'm fairly sure you don't like me." 

Baldr grimaced. "I've tried to." 

"Tried!"

"Yes, tried," Baldr said impatiently. "You are maddening. You set out to irritate, you wander into trouble and swear oaths to save yourself that bring Asgard -- bring your _friends_ to the brink of disaster, and you always seem to get away lightly." He sighed and sat up. "And yet, my father and brother and sister all love you dearly." That probably accounted for the getting away relatively lightly -- that and the fact that Loki really was at least as good at solving problems as at creating new ones. 

Loki glared at him. "I wouldn't call it lightly. I don't _want_ to destroy Asgard; I live here. And I've averted more disasters than I've caused. I fix them even when they're not my fault." 

"All true," Baldr admitted. "And because my kin love you, you must then be dear to me, and I have tried to honor you even when you frustrated me." And then, without warning, he reached out swiftly and caught Loki's wrist. "So, _Uncle_ , why did you try to kill me?" 

" _Ow_ ," said Loki, even though Baldr's grip was not _that_ hard. "I didn't! And this is a fine way to honor somebody!" 

"Then what were you trying to do? Hod's armorer, indeed." Baldr pulled the mistletoe dart from his pocket with his free hand, and Loki's eyes widened. "Why give this to my brother?" When Loki didn't answer, Baldr spoke to the dart as his mother had taught him. "Mistletoe, do you mean me ill?" 

And the mistletoe said, "Of course not, All-Beloved." 

Loki let out a breath.

Baldr glanced at him. "But would you harm me? Have you sworn?"

"I have given no oath," said the mistletoe. "I am young and weak and small, and your mother did not speak to me." 

"Ah. And who made you into a weapon?"

"Loki broke me from my tree and fashioned me." 

"I see." Baldr turned back to Loki, spinning the dart between his fingers. "Well?" 

Loki flinched. "What do you want from me?" 

"An explanation," Baldr said, exasperated, "but that may be hopeless. _Why?_ Did you not say you don't want to destroy Asgard?" 

He half expected Loki to smirk and point out that he lied. Instead Loki yanked against his hand again and said, "I don't. And you are hardly Asgard." 

"No." Baldr frowned at him. "But my father would have to avenge me," losing another son, and a brother, because Baldr could hardly have been the only one who'd recognized Loki with Hod. "And then, I imagine, your sons would come to avenge you." Those battles, those deaths, were foretold with more confidence than Baldr had in his dreams.

And Loki had gone pale. 

"Is that not what you wanted, then?" Baldr started out intending the words to be cutting, but they ended gentler than that and a real question. 

Loki looked away from him. "It would hardly have killed you. _Look_ at it. Hod doesn't have that kind of luck." 

"He has fate, from what you say."

"I wanted to see if it could be done. I wanted to see something trouble you, as it seems nothing ever does--"

Baldr's sharp laughter interrupted him.

Loki glared. "And when it does, everyone falls all over themselves to fix it. I wanted to see you bleed." 

"Very well, then." Baldr flipped the dart between his fingers and thrust it inward; Loki jumped, and the mistletoe dart gave a thin wail of protest and splintered as it drove into Baldr's palm. Blood welled up around it. The pain was a bright sharp thing, startling yet familiar. Baldr gave Loki a hard look, then let go of him and began pulling bits of mistletoe out of his hand.

Loki jumped up and backed a few steps away, then stopped, still staring at him. "Have you ever thought you might be a little too accommodating?" 

"My other-self certainly thinks so. Are you satisfied now?" Perhaps that was a little sarcastic. "Or should I tell you what troubles me?" 

"Didn't you already?" Loki asked. 

Baldr looked up at him in surprise. "Some of it." He flicked away a long splinter. He did not especially want to explain to Loki that the dreams had left him wondering if he was going mad. "I had thought you the most carefree of us all." 

Loki frowned at him. "By which you mean you think I don't care about anything." 

"Not very much, no." Deciding to try to trick one of his blood-brother's sons into killing the other -- or whatever Loki thought he'd been doing -- tended to support that idea. ...And yet. Baldr threw down the last bit of broken wood; the first was already putting up leaves, and a flower-bud bright as the blood that had wetted it. "I'm considering that I might have been mistaken." 

Loki took another step back, regarding him warily. "Is it not said that you never make mistakes in judgment?"

Baldr's eyes narrowed. He wasn't sure why Loki would try to suggest it was a mistake when Baldr was considering whether to think _better_ of him. "I am careful; that doesn't mean I know everything from the start. And have I ever handed down a judgment on you?" 

"No," said Loki. "But you will, won't you." 

Baldr raised his eyebrows. 

"You haven't tried to catch me," Loki said bitterly, "because it doesn't matter if I run. You won't beat me. You won't even lose your temper. You never do -- and you call _me_ maddening. You'll go to the Thing, and you'll accuse me. And at best I'll never be able to come home." 

"You could have thought of that sooner," Baldr pointed out unsympathetically. "I did think it was odd that you were still here. And in fact, I think I would rather not tell. If you won't try it again. It would break too many hearts to lose you." 

Loki would certainly have looked less astonished if Baldr had hit him over the head with something. "You are the one who said I wouldn't be missed from Asgard." 

Baldr looked at him blankly. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Odin would miss you, and grieve the betrayal, Thor likewise. Sigyn would follow you if you were banished and quite possibly if you were killed, and never quite forgive either of us." 

"You said no one would miss me," Loki repeated. "At the Thing when everyone was talking about _your_ dreams." 

Baldr spent a moment racking his brain and finally remembered what Loki meant. "You had just said being there was pointless," he said. "If you were only going to grumble, I thought you might as well not attend. It's hardly the same thing as not being missed by anyone in Asgard. Surely you didn't decide you wanted blood over that?" A wry look. "I would have liked to be elsewhere myself. When I went to consult my mother about the dreams, I was not expecting them to become a public concern. Hopefully that means I am _not_ a prophet." 

" _You_ admitted to not liking me. 'All-Beloved.'" 

"As you said," Baldr replied dryly, "I am not all of Asgard. I am certainly not happy with you, and I think I may reasonably conclude you are not very fond of me either... but I also think you won't try it again. I saw how you looked when I spoke of Ragnarok." It wasn't enough to keep him from being angry. At the threat, at the betrayal of people Loki did claim to love and _should_ care not to hurt. But it did make him think the malice had been only for him. 

"And for that, you're going to trust me?" 

Baldr shrugged. "Enough, I think. Though I will also have a talk with the mistletoe. I would ask you for an oath, but I don't think you'd give it as willingly." 

"Generally," Loki said, "when people ask me for oaths, they're threatening me. At best." 

"Yes, I can see how that would be offputting." 

Loki blinked. "Did you just make a joke?"

"It happens occasionally. Come and help me up, Uncle." This was also a little ridiculous. Baldr didn't need the assistance, but he was curious whether Loki would humor him. Especially by getting within reach. When Loki hesitated, Baldr added, "I will not harm you, unless you provoke me this much again. Although if it would _help_ , I can lose my temper with you now and then."

"It might," Loki muttered. He still looked distinctly skeptical, but he did come back over and pull on Baldr's uninjured hand. 

Baldr rose to his feet -- and pain like a slow-killing wound sliced into his abdomen. He staggered and fell back to one knee, clutching at Loki's arm with his other hand and smearing blood on his sleeve. 

Loki caught at him reflexively, but was leaning back as if he wanted to get away. "What's the matter with you now?" 

Baldr's eyes shut, and behind them lay a dark mountainside, spilt guts, Hod's face turning away... helpless pain, and white-hot rage.

* * *

Baldr made the trek out of camp and up the mountain in the dark to meet the maidens preparing his morning meal, with the taste of the envenomed food already hanging on his tongue. His left hand started stinging halfway up the slope for no apparent reason. He stopped to peer at his palm in the dimness, half drawing his sword to shed a little more light on it. He fancied momentarily that his dream-self's glow would be convenient for once. His night vision must be awful, though. Then again, he couldn't remember it ever being a problem.... 

He shook himself and resumed moving. He was treating his dreams as real -- what, just because he'd finally managed to act against the dream's usual too-accommodating nature? How someone that trusting and obliging was meant to be a fit king, he couldn't fathom. 

The sore hand _could_ be a portent, but it didn't seem to be a useful one. 

The shadows slid and parted ahead of him. The sliver of starlight on blade showed him Hod wielding a sword, but not early enough to let him parry. 

Hod struck at him and drew back sharply. Baldr had time to wonder what he was retreating from and to see that the blade was dark (Gone? Dropped or broken?) before he felt the pain and sliding in his side. It took his breath from him, and he stumbled and fell to his knees. He found something soft beneath them and felt a tug at his side, and a wave of disorientation and haze. 

Hod stepped back farther, and Baldr saw something glimmer at his waist. With Hod's shadow gone, Baldr saw he was kneeling on his own intestines, dark blood spilling from his side. He drew and lunged upward, nearly skewering Hod, who skipped back out of the way with a rattle of stones. 

Hod melted into shadow and stone, then. Baldr felt weirdly tired. He wasn't sure if it was getting darker or if his eyes had closed, but either way, he'd lost Hod. (He felt like weeping at the thought instead of raging, as if bereft of a brother instead of revenge.) 

He sucked in a breath against unaccustomed pain. He had more immediate concerns. Though his own skin was hard to pierce, he'd seen enough men bleed before to have an idea of the dangers. Weakness, clouded thought, unconsciousness, death. He gathered his guts up as best he could and began climbing again. 

At dawn, he spilled through the cave-mouth onto the venom-maidens' floor. The eldest rose up with a cry. Baldr bit his tongue against the pain and picked himself up again. "I may be in greater need of your arts than usual," he said, through clenched teeth. 

The youngest of them came to him with her hands shaking. She looked pale in the torchlight, frightened. Ashamed, Baldr thought, and his stomach turned over. ( _Probably_ not literally. He thought. It was hard to be sure at the moment.) He had met Hod on the path here, after all. And the gleam of firelight off their weaving was not unlike the shine of the belt Hod had been wearing.

"Our food cannot help you now," the eldest said. "It strengthens, but it doesn't heal. Let us--" 

"Strength sounds useful about now," Baldr grated, "but I suppose you'll do as you will." 

By noon they had taken him down to the camp again. He lay in a high fever that day, too hot and too chilled by turns and always ragingly thirsty, and his men began mourning. He staggered from his bed in the night and surprised the maidens, pulling them from their sleep to demand the envenomed food again, while the snakes lay in a pile by their fire. 

"It will do little for you," the middle one said, frustrated. 

"Something is better than nothing," Baldr said. 

"It may endanger you further."

He laughed at that, hoarse and cracked, and tried to wipe away sweat only to find his skin dry. "What can it do, kill me? I think you have already done that." 

They exchanged troubled looks. But they cooked him breakfast and roused the serpents to pour their venom on it, and he returned to camp with it burning in his belly to urge his men out to fight. He tried to lead them and found the bones in his limbs turning to water, demanded a litter to carry him to the battle. He lurched off it, time and again, but Hod's men seemed to flee him, always just out of reach, as if they meant to condemn him to die in his tent. 

He tried to fight off his own men when they came to put him back on the litter. "Leave me among the battle-slain," he tried to tell them, but they bore him back nonetheless and he lay gnashing his teeth and listening to them tell tales as if he were already dead.

* * *

Baldr dragged himself back to his feet and let go of Loki, inhaling. The dizziness was not his own. No blood welled from his side. He shook his head, which made the world reel disturbingly around him, and turned toward Breidablik.

Loki, rather to his surprise, followed him several steps and then blocked his path, asking exasperatedly, "Well?" 

Baldr stopped and looked at him blankly. Loki's hair looked unusually literally fiery, perhaps because the rest of Baldr's vision was a bit smeared. He blinked. "Well what?"

Loki stared. "Are you doing this on purpose? I asked what's the matter with you." 

Oh. "I wasn't ignoring you. I don't know...." Baldr trailed off, distracted, as his vision was momentarily overlaid with darkness instead of daylight, mountain-slope instead of level ground. Perhaps it was just as well he hadn't been moving at the time. "Another dream," he said finally. "It's difficult to explain." 

"You're awake," Loki pointed out, as if he thought Baldr might have missed this. It might not have been an unreasonable suspicion. 

"Yes," Baldr agreed. The disorientation receded partially, though the feeling of having been sliced open did not, and he walked around Loki. "Excuse me. I think I'd best speak of it with Nanna." 

Loki followed him home, possibly out of curiosity, and only left when Nanna -- seeing the dried blood on his shirt, while Baldr's palm was long since healed and rubbed clean -- asked if he'd been injured. Baldr followed her inside, stretched out on their bed with some relief, and explained everything he could. The mistletoe dart, his strange conversation with Loki, and the stranger end to it.

"I don't like it," Nanna said, after she insisted on examining his side. 

Baldr's awareness wavered between his sunlit clean room and a cave full of lampsmoke and the smell of sweat and venom. Nanna's warm hands, pleasant on his skin, merged strangely with the stinging of other hands washing the wide-slit wound and stuffing battered intestines back into it. "Nor do I," he said. "I think my counterpart is dying." 

She splayed a hand over his ribs. "Will that affect you?"

"I don't know." He could have survived the injury. A god or giant generally died quickly or not at all. By its nature, he was unlikely to survive dying. He had no idea how dreaming another self's death fit into that. "If that kills me, then I didn't have much time anyway. He _is_ mortal." He was silent for a long moment. "If it doesn't, I will mourn him."

"You believe he saved your life." 

"Yes. Annoyed as I was with him at the time." He hadn't seen this coming.

Nanna sighed in her turn and kissed the phantom wound.

* * *

Baldr spent another half hour lying down and then, determinedly, got up and went about his usual activities for the day. It made no difference to his counterpart's injuries or to how he personally felt. Which was... dreadful, mostly. His side hurt, he felt feverish, and it preyed on his mind that his dream-self had aided him and he might not be able to do the same. 

If he believed the man and the world he dreamed were real, he thought he could work out how to reach them, but it required a bloodletting. 

The night was strange and too long. Baldr spent it sure by turns that he was himself, god of light and the joys of summer, in bed with his wife in their glimmering hall and blanketed by the soft wings of disoriented moths -- or himself, a warlord raging on his deathbed at traitor and foe and friend alike.

On the next day, Baldr sent those who sought his judgments to Forseti. He found the splinters of the dart and asked where they'd grown, then went to the west side of Valhalla to break off a branch of young mistletoe -- and discovered that it parted willingly for him but wouldn't break his skin, even when he carved a sharp blade and even when he asked, even when he cajoled. After losing the argument he leaned against the oak where it had grown for a long time, sweating under another man's fever, thinking, listening to the clangor of his dream-self's battles blur and trade places with the noise of the warriors' sport -- until the sun went down and the slain picked themselves up to go in and feast. 

With a sudden determination, he took his branch and went to Thor's hall. 

Thialfi opened the door to him and said gladly, "Baldr!" -- and then, delight sliding from his face in favor of alarm, reached out and caught his arm. "What happened? Are you well?" 

Baldr blinked at him, honestly caught off guard. Once he'd pulled himself together, no one had commented yesterday. "I gather I don't look it?"

Thialfi looked a bit embarrassed and let go. "I suppose you would have to be, but -- well, no, you really don't."

"I'm not about to fall over," Baldr assured him. 

"That's a relief," Thor said, appearing behind Thialfi and looking rather worried. "But what happened? You're not meant to be able to become ill now." 

That explained what _looked_ to be wrong with him. Baldr sighed, feeling the tug of someone else's strained breath against a wound that wasn't there. "I didn't sleep well," he said. "I apologize for being abrupt, but do you know where to find Loki?" 

Thor blinked and stepped back, gesturing him in. "He's here, but why?" 

Baldr paused. "It's somewhat complicated to explain." He didn't think Thor would be eager to decide he was hallucinating, but the explanation was still strange. "I have a question that I think is better suited to him than Odin."

Thor looked mystified, but directed him to Loki. Who looked up, took in the sight of Baldr carrying a mistletoe branch, and jumped to his feet. His eyes darted toward the window. 

"I come in peace," Baldr said. 

"You look feverish," Loki said suspiciously, as if fever were commonly accompanied by outbreaks of unheralded violence. 

"My mortal dream-self is dying of a gut wound," Baldr said, then held out the mistletoe. "Will you make me a knife?" 

"Have you," Loki asked slowly, hands still at his sides, "by any chance lost your wits, such as they were?" 

"I don't think so." 

"You think your dreams are not portents but events in the life of someone else with your name." 

"That is true." 

"And you want me to make you a mistletoe knife. What are you going to do, hurry him along? I'm not sure that will work." 

"I should think not. His invulnerability is of a very different kind. No, I want to visit him, and need a knife that will cut my skin to do it." 

Loki pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, then looked again at Baldr. "And what if I go and tell Frigg, instead?"

Baldr smiled at him and watched Loki reflexively start to smile back, then suppress it in favor of scowling. "I don't think you will." 

Loki looked exasperated. "Don't you know how to carve a knife from wood?" 

"Yes, but it didn't work. So there is some skill you have that I lack." 

"Many, but perhaps Frigg thought better of letting it go unsworn. Did you try asking it nicely?" 

Baldr proffered the branch again. "I did. I also asked about the oath, and it still hasn't made one; it's just being stubborn. And you make good weapons, Loki." 

"You have skills I thought you'd spurn, if you stoop to flattery to get what you wanted." 

"That was merely a true statement, and if it were flattery it would seem not to be working, so I question calling it a skill."

"I didn't say it was a very good skill."

Baldr thought about being irritated, then decided that his dream-self was in a foul enough mood for them both and laughed instead. 

Loki groaned. "What will you do if I refuse?"

Consult Odin, perhaps. He wasn't looking forward to it; he was tired and in pain and Odin might or might not agree with his plan. (On the other hand, there was at least a chance he'd agree because he loved the one asking.) Drop dead on the morrow, maybe. He wasn't especially looking forward to that either, although it was possible that instead he would merely dream about being dead. Or better, stop hearing from his other self at all. Something in him rejected that thought as unworthy. 

Baldr said instead, "Stay here and bother you about it." 

Loki gave him an incredulous look.

Baldr smiled at him. 

Loki laughed, short and sharp like a fox's bark, almost a startled sound. "Maybe there's more to you than I thought. Very well, son of Odin. Give me the branch."

Baldr's smile brightened, even as his vision hazed over with fevered pain. "Thank you, Loki."

* * *

Baldr left Loki to his work and was surprised to receive him at Breidablik before the following dawn. 

"Welcome," said Nanna. "Come in and have breakfast." Then she caught sight of what Loki bore, as he stepped into the light. " _That_ was fast. Is that a _sword_? I thought you were making a knife this time."

"It amused me to--" Loki paused and looked past her at Baldr. "What did you tell her I was doing?" he asked lightly. 

"I told her everything," said Baldr. "And that was certainly swift work if you're done already. I thought at first you must have run into a problem." 

"Are you both mad?" Loki wondered aloud. "No, I had no trouble, and as you couldn't do it, I don't see why I would have asked you to help if I had. Yes, it is a sword, of sorts." He drew it -- a short, slender, flexible blade, built rather like him really. "It was all I could get out of the branch. I've the knife you asked for, too." He flipped the shorter white-wood blade from nowhere toward Baldr.

It was an easy throw, just fast enough to raise eyebrows but too slow and too arced to be a serious attack, and Baldr decided from the subtly nervous expression as soon as it was in the air that Loki had once again not entirely been thinking about what he was doing. Baldr reached out and caught it by the hilt, then smiled and shook his head. Even if Loki hadn't had his fill of seeing Baldr bleed, this would be an absurd situation in which to try -- and anyway, he couldn't be _that_ bad at throwing knives. It wasn't as if Baldr's reflexes were what they should be after all this time letting things almost hit him. The knife grumbled a little as he touched the point of the blade, but it was fine and sharp beyond what was normally possible for mere wood, and he could feel it would cut him. 

When he looked up, Nanna had taken the sword. Unlike Loki, she looked entirely relaxed about it, and the white blade looked graceful rather than ridiculous in her hand. "Do you always go further than you're asked to?" she inquired, as if Loki had not just thrown a knife at her husband that could theoretically hurt him. 

Loki looked away. "Usually not for enemies." 

Baldr ran his thumb over the mistletoe knife and gave him a long, thoughtful look. "Do you want to come with me?"

Loki started and stared at him. "Why?" 

A shrug that would have pulled uncomfortably at the swollen wound if it were real here, and did not. He could feel his dream-self thrash, which did. "You're curious." 

"Why would you _ask_?"

"You've made the journey possible. It seemed only fair to ask." 

"I tried to kill you." 

Baldr smiled at him. Maybe his dream-self's death-longing was getting to him. "You said Hod didn't have that kind of luck." 

Loki swallowed. "You said he had fate." 

"You told me that, actually." Baldr spun the knife into the air and caught it again -- Loki's eyes followed it; did he really think Baldr had never handled sharp objects before the oaths? Ah. No. Perhaps he thought Baldr might throw it back. "Anyway, don't do it again." 

"We are not fond of each other's company." 

"It is not a social visit," Baldr countered. 

Loki frowned. "Are you planning to leave me there?"

"What? No!" Baldr lowered the knife to his side in real shock, no longer playing, and rather offended. "I think you know better." 

Loki gazed at him for a long moment and then said, "I will see this dream-world of yours."

* * *

Nanna waited to guide him back, if need be, and also because she thought his counterpart might not behave sensibly around her even if he _weren't_ feverish. Baldr was forced to agree with her. The wooden knife did its work, and by the time the cut began to sting Baldr found himself standing with Loki in a damp cave reeking of waste, spoilt food, and venom. There was a firepit, gone cold, and three snakes tangled beside it. 

Loki shivered and wrinkled his nose ostentatiously. "Where is your dream-self? I think you've come to the wrong place." 

Baldr looked down at his hands, seeing their bright sheen like a foreign thing, wondering at being able to stand steadily and move without the wound gaping. "This is where my meals are prepared." 

Loki asked sharply, " _Yours?_ "

Baldr caught his breath. "His." 

The abandoned serpents wriggled across the floor. He stooped to meet them, looking around, and took a deep breath to try to clear the other Baldr's dizziness from his head. He'd hoped the confusion would end when they walked the same world, not get worse. There was a plate, cracked and left on the floor with food drying on it. He remembered demanding it and then dashing it from her hand. Why didn't he know the venom-maidens' names? There was brown blood on the floor, too, thickest by the entrance, soaked deep into the surface. 

Light and heat flared against his face, followed by the clack and crunch of Loki adding wood to the rekindled fire. 

"We're not staying," Baldr said. 

"No? You looked to be settling in," Loki said sardonically. "Some of us still feel the cold." 

Baldr watched the serpents turn back toward the hearth. "You're right, and I beg your pardon. I should have thought of it." 

Loki gave him an odd look. "That was not to suggest I am opposed to leaving. What _are_ we doing here?"

"I wanted to see." Baldr threw him a wry grin. "And I wished to arrive unobserved." 

"Will this really help? You are not well suited to slinking through a camp of uneasy men." 

"Ah, but everyone except you tends to trust me," Baldr said lightly. "Though what they may think I am when their king lies dying, I don't know." He picked up the broken plate and brought a bite of meat to his lips. The acrid smell was familiar from numberless dreams. It was... not appetizing. He put it in his mouth anyway, with a sense of resigned habit, and chewed. Even compared to what he had been eating for strength, the texture was wrong somehow, and a flavor of decay underlay it. 

"Nothing here is sworn to you," Loki said. "Or have you forgotten that?" 

"I have not," Baldr said around the morsel, "but I doubt I am easier to poison than my mortal counterpart." 

Loki came over and took a piece as well, sniffed it, and then snatched both pieces of the plate and flung the whole thing in the fire, which flared up in white flame and stinging smoke. Baldr blinked at him. "That was vile _before_ it lay rotting for two days on the ground," Loki said with some asperity. "Did you not notice the serpents themselves hadn't taken it for their prey?" 

Why was he eating this? What had he thought when he was putting it in his mouth -- what _he_ had been eating for strength? Baldr took a breath, quelled the urge to cough as the smell of the meat went down his throat, and spat it out into the fire as well. "I take your point," he said. "Though I thought you ate anything." 

"I _can_ eat nearly anything. I prefer actual food. I'm not impressed by the cooks your dream-self employs." 

Baldr laughed at that. "Well, I thank you for the advice. And you're right, too, we should be on our way." 

"I could cleanse this place further," Loki said, and the flames leaped in the pit. 

"More disruption than I'd planned," Baldr said, but the idea appealed. The cave-house woke a deeper revulsion in him than he would have expected; the stench mingled with his counterpart's pain and resentment of the betrayal, and he crossed to the entrance to rest his hand on the edge of it. The steady support and the cool shock of the outside air made him realize how close he'd come to falling, in there, and the sight of the moon and his own skin shining back at it reminded him who he _was_. He looked back at Loki, who seemed faintly sullen again, and said, "Might you wait until after we're off the mountain?" 

Loki blinked at him, then smirked. "Until we are no longer between the blaze and the attention we wish to avoid? Oh, very well." 

They coaxed the snakes into being picked up, though hisses of forlorn protest accompanied their departure from the fire. The mountain path was easy, even with fever clouding his eyes; Baldr had walked this path in his dreams, in deeper darkness than this. 

He raised the hood of his cloak as they approached the camp, and he knew Loki had set the cave-house and its filth ablaze only when the sentry's eyes fixed on it. They walked in quietly, passing between tents with a will and surety the mortals didn't think to question when they saw at all. Baldr's vision darkened and the world tilted, and he had a sense of doom walking toward him, but he gazed ahead and kept moving. 

When he entered the tent, the smell of blood and sickness assaulted him. He saw Hel standing before him, gazing at the bed. The mortals walked wide of her without appearing to notice, but he stared back at her from the bed. She was a hazy shape in his eyes, blurred by fever and torchlight and shadow, but he knew her. 

Baldr inhaled the stink of the tent, shook off the vision of his other-self and set his hands on her shoulders. 

She turned. 

_Now_ he could see her clearly. Baldr caught his breath, at her gaze like the white-wood sword. "Cousin," he murmured, and the question in her eyes sharpened. "You know you will have him in the end --" (lying in the bed he rebelled, convulsed, swearing) "-- as no other weapon can fell him in battle. Will you let me pass today?"

"You are no cousin I know and not from the worlds I know," Hel said, her voice a harsh rasp under music. She studied him. "But I will yield for a kiss." 

"Loki, if you have a counterpart here, will he seek to kill me too?" Baldr asked, then leaned down and pressed his lips to Hel's. They molded to him, half-withered though they were, and her eyes closed, the bright and the shriveled one.

The smell of decay washed down his throat as their lips parted and tongues met, and weakness and the feel of death struck into his bones; but her knees buckled, and Baldr put his arm around her waist and held her to him. Frost and summer sun, life and death of two worlds clashed and drank each other in. It was not like kissing Nanna. 

They parted, gasping.

"That was worth waiting a few years for him," said Hel. "But you know it's not all you will pay."

"I know," said Baldr.

Hel stepped aside.

"I'm not sure it's my counterpart you need to worry about," said Loki. "We did leave Nanna with a sword."

"Were Nanna inclined to jealousy, I think sending me ahead to the other woman would not be her chosen approach." Baldr heard his own voice twice, the second a distant echo fever-blurred. He half forgot Loki again and turned to his dream-self, lying ashen on the pallet. He crossed the tent as if drawn there, and touched him.

* * *

Baldr drifted in fever through the evening and dreamed he was walking through the camp while a leaping flame kept pace at his side. He saw Death stand in the tent watching him and he saw himself go up and embrace her, and much as he struggled he couldn't pull away. 

Hel stepped aside, and the tent brightened, and all his attendants turned to look but did not step forward. He raised a hand to himself, to beckon or ward away. A hand blazing white as the sun closed on his and he forgot who he was. 

He was Baldr son of Odin, that he knew. He was war and he was peace all-beloved; he was summer bright immortal and a fleeting thing of filth and sweat, seared with fever and the hotter streaks of pain from his side. 

He gripped his own hand and leaned over himself and said in a voice that dripped into his ears like golden light, "I can save you this time, but it will do little good if you continue in your folly." 

"My folly," he said hoarsely, incredulous, but the hot pain in his side echoed and the breath rattled in his throat as he remembered standing and laughing as his kin flung weapons at him.

He blushed; he felt the heat and saw double, blood coming into the glowing face and a smirk starting on the drawn one. 

"I thank you for ending that," he said then, all grace, only to add, "if not for insulting everyone in the process. I am here to repay you, I hope."

"What do you want of me?" 

"Give up Nanna," he said, exasperated, and jolted in shock so that a tearing pain shot through his side and a sliding wetness cooled it. 

"Nanna--" _He_ had her.

"She loves Hod!" he hissed. "The one here loves Hod, as I can see even through your eyes. She is bound by her own will, not a rash oath. You will never win her allegiance by killing him. Give it up, let Hod alone -- you'll live longer and die better." 

"Is that prophecy? Would I, or would you have me wed Hel and be done with it?" 

"You could do worse than a goddess who reigns over a world, and whose power touches nine," Baldr said to Baldr, laughing. "No, marry that tavern girl for all I care." He looked suddenly thoughtful. " _I_ was not the one who thought of her first, and I thought best of you when you sat up with her." 

This was simultaneously something altogether obvious and a wholly new thought, that he might be judged -- and judged favorably -- not on his prowess in battle or Thing but on the night he spent telling wild dreams to a serving-woman with a cracked head. "She'd say what Nanna did. That there can be no true bond where the kin are too unequal." 

"I grant her father can't threaten you, but she might find a few compensations," his counterpart said drily, then cut off any argument about political ramifications by adding, "Marry someone else if you please, just stop making a fool of yourself over the one woman who doesn't want you." 

"You have her." Bitter, bitter on his tongue, bile in two throats. 

"I know." 

He closed his eyes against the light, opened them because he didn't like looking down on himself. Thought of ignominious Death waiting just inside his tent. It was impossible to believe, now, that Nanna would ever love him. "I will do as you say. I swear." 

"Good." Hands stripped the bandages from his side. A white blade that did not catch the light slashed across a healing scratch in one gleaming palm; he raised a hand from the bed at the sudden burn and found it whole. Then the bright one thrust his cut hand into the wound and Baldr bit his tongue until he tasted blood, not to cry out as the light burned him away. He saw fire blossom -- no, red blood and yellow drainage staining his counterpart's side, and then all he could see was white and colored streaks as if he had looked into the sun.

When he could see again, he was gasping and covered in sweat, but his fever was gone and his vision clear. No sun and flame stood in his tent, no shrouded death. His side was scarred and whole. He could stand long enough to have the bedding changed. 

When he slept, he did not dream of Asgard.

* * *

Baldr snatched his hand back out of the closing wound. He felt the connection end, parted as if cut with a knife, as if he'd cut his counterpart out of his own side. He was himself alone again, wounded but not drowning in a mortal's pain, and he laughed for the dizzy freedom of it. The other-world wavered around him like water, the ground yielding under his feet and the torchlight dimming to shadow as he stepped back from the bed. 

Flame-hot hands closed on his shoulders and turned him. Loki's sharp features flickered too, and the three snakes lifted their heads from his shoulders and swayed. "Baldr. Are you done here?" 

"Altogether." Baldr smiled. "Why, was there anything else you wanted to do?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "No. Come on, then, time to go." 

"I'm free of him now. I should be more focused," Baldr remarked. In that case, why was he waiting for Loki to remind him of things? 

"Then act like it. You still look feverish." 

"Oh, I probably am. But it will pass." 

Loki sighed. "Do we need to return to the witches' house to get back?"

"No." Baldr blinked. "Anyway, it's on fire." 

"That hardly matters -- oh, you could burn here, couldn't you?" Loki looked worryingly interested by this, but his next words were, "But I could still the flames." 

"We can leave from here." Baldr pressed his hand against the wound in his side and thought of home. There was plenty of blood already. The world firmed up enough to step off it. 

He thought of Nanna, her arms outstretched and gleaming, the wooden sword white in her hand like a sunbeam on water. 

With the next step, the smoky tent and the night were gone, and Breidablik shone around them. Nanna rose from her seat and flung her arms around his neck. Baldr laughed again, this time for sheer joy, and bent to kiss her. 

After a moment she drew back. "Is it done?" 

"Yes. My fate and my dreams are my own again." 

"You are fever-hot and bleeding through your shirt," she pointed out, then looked over at Loki. "And you brought the snakes." 

"They seemed abandoned," said Baldr. "And _I'll_ heal." 

"You should see Eir," Loki remarked. "Even if you are acting like it hurts less than when you only felt it secondhand."

"It's much less serious for me than for him," Baldr explained. They both looked stern at him, and he laughed. 

"I'll bind the wound first," Nanna said, frowning at the bright blood soaking his side. "Sit down." 

Baldr obeyed, not sorry to rest. Despite the giddiness of having his fate to himself again, he was also growing genuinely lightheaded, and though the festering heat was already starting to fade, he suspected his insides might not be altogether stable. 

He only realized he'd swayed on his stool when Loki's hands came down hard on his shoulders again. "Stop that. If you're going to faint, lie down." 

"I'm not going to faint." His counterpart had walked up a mountain when he first received the wound. Granted, it hadn't been good for him. 

"Your blood glows," Loki said. "Like red gold and embers. Did you know that? It was starting to light up the tent." 

"Of course I knew." Baldr looked at him, puzzled. "I have bled before. If I couldn't be injured, no one would have had to ask things not to." 

"It's not so obvious when it's only a little. Had you ever been hurt severely?"

"You grow morbid," Baldr said lightly, as Nanna returned with bandages. He caught his breath and then held it as she pulled the fabric of his shirt from the wound. "Yes, I have. Do you imagine liking me personally means an enemy of Asgard will never fight?" 

Loki looked sharply at him, eyes narrowed. "Is that all?" 

"What?" 

"Don't 'what' me. They try to keep you, don't they." 

Baldr rolled his eyes and was momentarily glad the blood loss made him less likely to blush obviously. "Some do. Some are more courteous about the invitation than others." 

"You should tell such tales," Loki said, eyes gleaming. "I thought you never had any adventures." 

"They are not good tales," said Baldr, more sharply than he meant to. "I've killed people I would rather have called friend." 

Nanna's hands paused, and she took his hand and squeezed it, smearing it with his blood. 

Loki looked thoughtful. "Not very good friends, if they seek to bind you just to have your company." 

Baldr relaxed a little, and more as Nanna tied the bandage tightly down. It restricted his movement, enough to keep the wound mostly together. "Well, they're not all like that. But I will tell a story at the next gathering. I think you might like it." 

He did tell it: a long tale of dreams and suspected madness, dark seeming-fate and its unraveling, the journey to another world. He cast Loki as helper and companion, omitting the original discussion of the mistletoe, and warm earth-bound Nanna as his guiding star. 

Loki fell in beside him, afterward, as he left hand-in-hand with Nanna. "And here I thought you were just a poor storyteller." 

"You said earlier that you thought I never had any adventures." 

"Either could have been true!"

Baldr smiled. "Has your opinion of me improved, then?" 

"You're more interesting than I thought," Loki conceded. 

"Careful! Such high praise might go to my head," Baldr said, grinning. Then, more seriously, "I begin to see, too, why my father and brother value you as a traveling companion." 

Loki snorted. "You do not. They like me. You found me useful." His eyes glinted. " _They_ are not normally so scatterbrained." 

"I liked you better than I expected," said Baldr. 

"Such high praise!" Loki returned, and his eyes were laughing. 

"It's a good start, all things considered," said Nanna. "Maybe you two should try traveling together more often. But I might have to come along and keep you both out of trouble." 

"Now that would be a feat!" Loki said.

Nanna smiled sweetly at him. "Trouble you don't want to be in, then." Baldr suspected Loki still wasn't taking her entirely seriously. "What are you planning to do with the snakes?" 

"Am I meant to do something with the snakes? I thought Baldr would give them to Skadi." 

Baldr blinked. "Perhaps _you_ should give them to Skadi. She might take it the wrong way from me." 

Loki looked at him askance. "She _likes_ you."

"That would be why!" And that set Loki _and_ Nanna giggling, which was what he'd hoped for. 

Nanna had been right; he _should_ go traveling again. Perhaps with either or both of them. His counterpart's warring no longer preyed on his mind, but there was some restlessness of his own. And when he slept now, his dreams were no darker than they'd ever been.

* * *


End file.
